Here's what the state Department of Transportation's Hudson Valley division has on hand to throw at Old Man Winter:

• People: The region has 552 highway maintenance workers, including 28 temporary winter hires. From Nov. 26 to March 1, they work two shifts, 3:30 a.m. to noon and noon to 8:30 p.m. The shifts expand to midnight-to-noon and noon-to-midnight and extend into weekends and holidays during major storms.

• Roads: The region plows 5,200 lane miles of state highway in Rockland, Orange, Ulster, Columbia, Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester counties. Municipalities such as Yonkers and White Plains plow another 300 lane miles of state highway within their limits.

• Plows: The region fields 226 snow plows that cost an average of $204,425 apiece. The large dump trucks carry front and side plows and six tons of rock salt.

• Treatment: The region pretreats all its major highways with salt brine in advance of major storms, a program that will continue to expand. The primary deicing material is rock salt, sodium chloride, enhanced with magnesium chloride. The region's five-year average salt use is 74,000 tons, but it only used 30,000 tons last winter.

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POUGHKEEPSIE — Ever since Jeff Karge joined the state Department of Transportation in October, he has been singing, "Let It Snow."

"The seasoned guys sort of give me the business about it," said the 42-year-old Wappingers Falls man and former truck driver, "but I want to get out there and practice what I've learned in snow school — it's a lot of stuff — and learn more."

The DOT stages a two-day school every year to train new highway maintenance workers like Karge in the science — and the art — of plowing snow. Experienced workers are subject to a similar drill to maintain their one-person plowing certification, a requirement that emphasizes the task's importance.

The school consists of four hands-on classes, after which workers are put behind the wheel of the DOT's basic $204,425 snow plow with an instructor who evaluates their ability to operate and control it — first without snow on the road, and then with it.

The typical plow is a large dump truck that sports a 10-speed, non-synchronized transmission and weighs 59,740 pounds when loaded with six tons of salt and equipped with front and side plows. Deployed, the plow-span is 13 feet, 6 inches.

This year's 75 new hires come to snow school already certified in operating the dump truck and the DOT's other workhorse, the front-end loader — which they will use to load their trucks with salt.

And they come to the DOT for a starting salary of $29,278, already equipped with a commercial driver's license, a clean driving record and a year-plus of driving a 26,000-pound-or-better truck with a manual transmission and airbrakes.

"Everybody has to be able to do everything themselves," said Joe Bush, the DOT's supervising equipment operator instructor in the Hudson Valley. "We haven't had two-person plows since 1992, and we're so bare-bones now that when it snows, everybody has to be on the road. Nobody can stay behind to load trucks or do anything else."

Classes are kept small to allow plenty of time for questions, pop quizzes and practical exercises. Matt Gaboy and Steve Milioto, for example, finish "Tires, Wheels and Chains" with a best-time competition for putting snow chains on the dump truck's tires, a task that shouldn't take more than five minutes per tire.

Larry Blondin teaches safe use of oxyacetylene torches with a fire extinguisher at the ready. One at a time, workers practice slicing through bolts to free a worn or damaged blade from a plow and then cutting a new blade at a 45-degree angle.

Then, Mary Lewis and Bill First spell out the DOT's exacting procedures for plowing and salting, procedures that change with the width, slope and condition of the road to ensure their effectiveness. And John Roosa demonstrates how to calibrate and operate the on-board devices, known as Dickey-johns after their manufacturer, that control salt application.

Karge and another new hire, Jon Walsh, a 35-year-old former town highway employee from Millerton, said the DOT was upfront about the rigors of the job when they signed on.

"I wasn't blindsided," said Karge. "The stability and benefits, the good people here, compensate for the pay and the work."

"Besides," added Walsh, "there are places to go at the DOT, opportunities to move up."